terms and conditions

Terms and conditions of use

1. Introduction
1.1. These terms and conditions govern your use of our website – www.bridgetoindia.com.By using our website, you accept these terms and conditions in full; if you disagree with any part of these terms and conditions, you must not use our website.
1.2. You must be at least 18 years of age to use our website; by using our website, you warrant and represent to us that you are at least 18 years of age.

2. Our details
2.1. This website is owned and operated by BRIDGE TO INDIA Energy Private Limited.
2.2. We are registered in India under registration number CIN: U40106 HR2008 PTC058267, and our registered office is at C8/5 DLF 1, Gurugram 122001, INDIA.
2.3. Our principal place of business is at C8/5 DLF 1, Gurugram 122001, INDIA.
2.4. Our GST number is 06AADCB 6783 D1ZQ.
2.5. You can contact us by post at the address given above or by telephone on +91-124-420-4003 or by email at contact@bridgetoindia.com.

3. Ownership and licence to use
3.1. All information and content on our website is owned exclusively by us. We reserve the right to discontinue or alter any or all of the website content at any time.
3.2. The website contents are protected by Indian copyright and international copyright/intellectual property laws under applicable treaties and/or conventions.
3.3. We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the website.
3.4. We reserve the right to restrict access to our website at our discretion; you must not circumvent or bypass, or attempt to circumvent or bypass, any such access restriction measures.

4. Acceptable use
4.1. You must not edit or modify any material on our website.
4.2. You must not:
(a) sell, rent or sub-license material from our website;
(b) share, reproduce or copy any material from our website without our express written consent.
4.3. You must not:
(a) use our website in any way or take any action that causes, or may cause, damage to the website or impairment of the performance, availability or accessibility of the website;
(b) use our website in any way that is unlawful, illegal, fraudulent or harmful;
(c) conduct any systematic or automated data collection activities (including without limitation scraping, data mining, data extraction and data harvesting) on or in relation to our website;
(d) use data collected from our website for any direct marketing activity (including without limitation email marketing, SMS marketing, telemarketing and direct mailing).

5. Limited warranties
5.1. We do not warrant or representcompleteness or accuracy of the information published on our website. The information available on our website is of general use and may not be suitable for you.
5.2. We aim to provide accurate and up-to-date information but are not legally liable for the accuracy of such information.
5.3. You use our website at your own risk.
5.4. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we exclude all representations and warranties relating to the subject matter of these terms and conditions, our website and the use of our website.

6. Registration and accounts
6.1. You may register for an account with our website by completing and submitting the account registration form on our website.
6.2. You must keep your password confidential.
6.3. You must not use any other person’s account to access the website.
6.4. You must not allow any other person to use your account to access the website.
6.5. You must notify us in writing immediately if you become aware of any unauthorised use of your account.
6.6. We may suspend or cancel your accountat any time in our sole discretion without notice or explanation.

7. Purchases
All purchases made on this website are non-refundable and non-exchangeable.

8. Your content
8.1. In these terms and conditions, “your content” means all information and materials (including without limitation text, graphics, images, audio material, video material, audio-visual material, scripts, software and files) that you submit to us for storage or publication on, processing by, or transmission via, our website.
8.2. You grant to us a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to reproduce, store and, with your specific consent, publish your content on our website.
8.3. You warrant and represent that your content will comply with these terms and conditions. Your content must not be illegal or unlawful, must not infringe any person’s legal rights, and must not be capable of giving rise to legal action against any person (in each case in any jurisdiction and under any applicable law).
8.4. Your content, and the use of your content by us in accordance with these terms and conditions, must not:
(c) infringe any copyright, trade mark or other intellectual property right;
(k) be in breach of any contractual obligation owed to any person;
(n) be untrue, false, inaccurate or misleading;

9. Privacy
9.1. Information collection and use – For a better experience while using our website, we may require you to provide us with certain personally identifiable information, including but not limited to your name, phone number andemail address. The information that we collect may be used to contact or identify you.
9.2. If you use our website, you agree to the collection and use of information in relation with these terms and conditions. The personal information collected by us is used for providing and improving our services. We will not use or share your information with anyone except as described here.
9.3. Log data – Whenever you visit our website, we collect information that your browser sends to us including your computer’s Internet Protocol address, pages of our website visited by you, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, and other statistics.
9.4. Cookies – these are files with small amount of data that is commonly used as anonymous unique identifier. These are sent to your browser from the website and are stored on your computer’s hard drive.Our website uses these “cookies” to collection information and to improve our website. You have the option to either accept or refuse these cookies and know when a cookie is being sent to your computer. If you choose to refuse our cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our Service.
9.5. Service providers – We may employ third-party companies and individuals to improve or repair our website and to assist with running our business activities etc. These third parties may have access to your personal informationto perform the tasks assigned by us to them. However, they are obligated not to disclose or use the information for any other purpose.
9.6. Security – We value your personal information and strive to protect it and keep it confidential. But as no technology or system can be 100% secure and reliable, we cannot guarantee absolute security of your personal information.
9.7. Links to other sites – Our website may contain links to other sites. These external sites are not operated by us and we have no control over, and assume no responsibility for their content, privacy policies, or any other business practices.
9.8. Children’s privacy – Our website does not serve anyone under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal identifiable information from children under 18. If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us so that we can delete their information and take any other necessary actions.

10. Breach of these terms and conditions
10.1. Without prejudice to our other rights under these terms and conditions, if you breach these terms and conditions in any way, or if we reasonably suspect that you have breached these terms and conditions in any way, we maysuspend your access to our website, prohibit you permanently from accessing our website and/or commence suitable legal action against you, whether for breach of contract or otherwise.
10.2. Where we suspend or prohibit or block your access to our website or a part of our website, you must not take any action to circumvent such suspension or prohibition or blocking (including without limitation [creating and/or using a different account).

11. Amendments
11.1. We may revise these terms and conditions from time to time.
11.2. The revised terms and conditions shall apply to the use of our website from the date of publication of the revised terms and conditions on the website, and you hereby waive any right you may otherwise have to be notified of, or to consent to, revisions of these terms and conditions.

12. Others
12.1. You hereby agree that we may assign, transfer, sub-contract or otherwise deal with our rights and/or obligations under these terms and conditions.
12.2. You may not without our prior written consent assign, transfer, sub-contract or otherwise deal with any of your rights and/or obligations under these terms and conditions.
12.3. If a provision of these terms and conditions is determined by any court or other competent authority to be unlawful and/or unenforceable, other provisions will continue in effect.
12.4. The exercise of your and our rights under these terms and conditions is not subject to the consent of any third party.
12.5. The terms and conditions constitute the entire agreement between you and us in relation to your use of our website and supersede all such previous agreements between you and us.
12.6. These terms and conditions shall be governed by and construed in accordance with Indian Law.
12.7. Any disputes relating to these terms and conditions shall be subject to the exclusivejurisdiction of the courts of India.

Will India be wrong-footed in a new era in climate change politics?

In the past week, India (the world’s third largest emitter of carbon) has been bolted to attention by two announcements. First, president Barack Obama of the US (the world’s second largest emitter) vowed to reduce carbon pollution from power plants by 30% by 2030. The very next day, China (the world’s largest emitter), announced its willingness to set absolute carbon targets from 2016 onwards. For India, this is worrying. It wants to avoid strict targets. In the past, its interests were aligned with those of the US and China. Now India fears it might be left alone out in the rain (or whatever else a changing climate might bring) when it comes to the Paris round of negotiations next year. This is part 1 looking at the changing international landscape. Part 2 will look at India’s options.

India wants unlimited carbon room for itself (to grow out of poverty), but strict climate action from others (India is extremely vulnerable to climate change). It is unlikely that it will get both

How India views climate change negotiations

In climate negotiations, India’s stance has been clear: Firstly, India does not accept any binding, external (internationally agreed) emissions caps. This could imperil the more important goal of development and ending poverty though industrialization. Secondly, India has very little responsibility for global climate change. Its per capita emissions are tiny compared with those of the developed world or even China. If you add a historical share (looking at a “carbon budget”) the historical responsibility is clearly with Europe, Japan and North America.

These are good arguments, no doubt. The only problem is this: If the rest of the world does not accept India’s arguments of fair carbon budgets and fails to reduce emissions significantly, Indians will suffer disproportionately. At Copenhagen, India therefore offered a more pro-active negotiating stance, based on the premise that India will never emit more on a per capita basis than developed nations. India also made a voluntary pledge to reduce its carbon intensity of GDP by 20-25% (based on 2005 levels). However, in coalition with China (and, more tacitly, the US and Japan), it prevented a binding, global emissions deal.

India’s alignment with China, Japan and the US at Copenhagen could only be a temporary one (refer). The countries’ interests are fundamentally out of sync: Their position in the economic development cycle and need for carbon emissions are different. Their vulnerability to climate change is different and their ability to deal with the effects of climate change is different. Actually, I would argue that India had more to gain than to lose from a global climate pact: placing limits on everybody’s freedom to emit might be more important than keeping one’s own unlimited freedom to emit. India is just too vulnerable to climate change (see picture).

The US and China are selling themselves well

The US and China now seem to have changed their minds with respect to emissions. Their announcements, however, are not principled, but pragmatic. Partially, they just follow, rather than drive, developments on the ground. And partially, they aim at other benefits such as cost savings through efficiency, energy security or less local pollution that happen to align with lower carbon emissions and are hence conveniently re-minted in the diplomatic coin of “climate change action”.

Look at the US: instead of triggering climate action, the targets are barely stating the obvious. Driven by the shale gas findings and the subsequent coal-to-gas-shift, emissions have already fallen by 12% since 2005. Extrapolating this trend to 2030 yields much more than a 30% reduction in carbon emissions. (The question is: what happens, if the shale boom is smaller than expected?)

And now, look at China: He Jiankun, Chairman of China’s Advisory Committee on Climate Change, has said, “The government will use two ways to control CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions in the next five-year plan, by intensity and an absolute cap.” China’s next five-year plan starts in 2016. China’s energy economy is built on coal. But that is changing. Air pollution and water scarcity make coal less attractive, while renewables are getting more cost competitive and are being deployed at a vast scale. The Chinese energy market is changing for political and economic reasons. Luckily, this change also means a lower emissions intensity of GDP. Hence, accepting targets will come at no cost to China or the US. But it gives them leverage on other countries in international negotiations.

India needs to act

Given that the US and China have broken rank and might now pile onto India to accept legally binding emissions targets, India’s newly elected government needs to think of a new strategy soon. On the 23rd of September, there is an international climate summit in New York, hosted by the UN. This is the first time that heads of government will meet again since Copenhagen in 2009. In early 2015, national voluntary guidelines are to be announced. These national plans will determine the global climate course. So the next months are crucial for the next 10 years or more.

[…] Indians still only emit less than 40% of the Chinese on a per capita basis and hundreds of millions don’t have access to grid electricity. So the case against emissions targets remains strong, but India needs to avoid being isolated and portrayed as the villain who prevents global consensus and progress. For my previous analysis of the changing international landscape, read part 1. […]